Don't go chasing waterfalls.

Waireinga Falls, Raglan. Remnants of a summer that disappeared abruptly over the last week.

Northern territory

　

This week will be my last in Canada - and consequently, my last outside of New Zealand for some considerable time. There are a myriad of things that I feel about this - mostly just sad to be leaving the Wide World and the wonderful new friendships I have made between countries, but also a deep-seated joy of the return, and a renewed love for Aotearoa and all it holds for my life.

The past week has been very house-centred, actually. Tom painted the back house, I helped on the trim and got so into it that I ended up doing the front steps of both houses, too. They look pretty good, if I do say so myself - think I may have found my calling! The yard shared between the two houses got a re-vamp too; there's a large garden section in the middle of the yard area, with a concrete wall around it about a foot high. Tom, Justin and a few others designed, built and varnished a great big beautiful outdoor table that fits perfectly over the top of it on Wednesday and Thursday. It's a great place to sit with a book on a sunny day, and of course to eat community dinner.

Christy and I paired up to go street-walking and had some great conversations with some ladies on Wednesday night (although I almost packed it in when I saw that Black Dahlia Murder were playing at a pub on the DTES), especially a seriously scary woman who lives in an apartment block/unofficial brothel not far from our house. I'll leave her name out for security and privacy (to be honest, it's possibly fake anyway). We sat and talked to her for about half an hour and arranged to take her out on Friday, but she wasn't well and couldn't come. I'm going to see her tomorrow - if you're of the prayin' type, she is in a really dark space and yearns for support and people to be around her. She mused ruefully to Christy and I that she has plenty of floaters in her life who are "acquaintances... not people who you, like, do stuff with." I'm going to see her tomorrow, so any prayer for that would be great. I would also love to be able to pass the baton on to other women in the community that can take care of her and get her hooked in to healing support and intervention. Really, I'm trying to do that with all the people I've connected with - connect them in turn with a community who are really in here for the long haul and can gift them with a journey of healing that goes beyond hanging out for a few weeks.

　

The weekend just been was an absolute miracle. Several of us women were supposed to go on a day trip up Mt. Seymour in North Vancouver to look for snow, but the lovely weather of the last week meant that the odds of the white stuff were not in our favour, and the bus that goes up the mountain wasn't going because it's the off season. It was all looking a bit dire. Then our lovely friend Jenny suggested that we pitch in and hire a car (pretty cheap actually - $60 between five people? Good times), go all out and drive up to Whistler for the day! When we compared the chances of snow, gorgeous landscape and cute wee hikes to that we would find in Van... needless to say it all made a hell of a lot more sense. So we did! Have a peek at my facebook page for pictures. How many photos can you take of mountain ranges? Lots, it would turn out.

Also, as I was staring dreamily out the window, somewhere just outside of Whistler I managed to see a (small) BLACK BEAR eating something on the side of the road! HOW FREAKING COOL IS THAT?! The whole experience lasted about three seconds, but I will be screaming and shrieking about it for days to come (and annoying Canadian members of the team who have seen tons of them). Ah, Mother Nature.


However, the day wasn't without sadness - we witnessed a head-on car collision take place three or four cars ahead of us on the highway just outside of Brandywine Falls. Noone really saw what happened, but a car from our northbound lane drifted across into a jeep heading in the opposite direction, both vehicles travelling about 90km/h. Mercifully both vehicles had airbags and neither spun through traffic or veered off the road - but we are unsure of how badly anyone was injured. None of us saw the accident proper, and none of us had First Response training, plus several other cars around us had pulled over to help, so we made the decision to keep driving. But of course, the rest of the journey was spent in a stage of dull guilt and worry - made worse by the fact that hours and hours later on our way home to Vancouver the wrecks were still there, complete with police. Whether or not we would have been able to help, I'll never know.

　

　

I'll be leaving in five days and have been feeling a little bit funny about it all - couldn't really put my finger on it, but I was in the car yesterday when it suddenly came to me that I think I may have lost a little bit of myself over the past few months. It probably started before I even left New Zealand, that slow disengagement with the 'me' that I'd known, in order to be open to the 'me' that I needed to be for this trip. Being encouraged again and again by the people who love me (and whom I love) back home to be always open to what God is doing and inviting me to in every opportunity has never been more that I could bear - actually it's been the door to some incredible stuff - but I never quite feel as flexible as I thought. I concentrate on being the learner whose heart resides out of the culture that I'm living in, in order to capture some of the beauty embodied in that culture, but in being that learner I'm drawn almost more deeply in, and before I know it I've put down roots. Egh.

But let's not get melancholy on it, shall we?

Anyway. I look forward to what this week brings. Hopefully another blogging session will fit into the picture somewhere before my time in Vancouver comes to a close. Goodness knows I need to keep debriefing!

Love you all. If you're floating around Tel Aviv and see Chris, tell him I love him too.

Go Canucks!

　

It's a stunning day in Vancouver. The weather has flipped on summer like we would flip on a light switch. The dying cherry blossoms of past weeks have given way to green leaves that line Oppenheimer Park with freshness and life.

What a busy past few weeks! The team have had the usual ebbs and flows of community dinners, visits and Bible studies, but the busiest part of the last couple of weeks was when we took on two new prehab candidates - a guy and a girl. This is slightly unusual, but we managed to make it work by putting one in each of the two Cordova Street houses. They stayed well, interacting with team rhythms and both successfully entered into rehab programmes at different points last week. Being a woman, I was more able to journey a little with our lady prehab (I'll call her Zoe for privacy reasons). She is a gorgeous and motivated woman who has three kids who have only very recently been taken into care - she loves them very much, not apparent in her words, but in her focus and determination to get clean. The foster care system here is huge - much bigger and even more bureaucratic than what we experience in New Zealand. I watched one Saturday unfold into disaster as Zoe was preparing to go with Ruth from our team to visit her kids in their foster home. She was bright and hopeful, drinking tea with me in the kitchen and animatedly describing the things that she loves about each of her children and how much she was looking forward to seeing them. She called the social worker to confirm the details of the visit, and was consequently informed that the time of the visit had been changed (what I want to know is when they were planning to tell her if she hadn't called?!). She asked to check with 'her program' (us) if that would be ok, and then call them back - the social worker said 'sure thing'. She checked, then rang them back, only to be told that her visit had been cancelled! Whether it was a misunderstanding, lack of trust in Zoe to ring back, malice - I'll never know, but as can be imagined, she was devastated. In a matter of about half an hour, her sunny morning which had started with such anticipation had been completely shattered. I never understood why, or whether that was even legal. Ruth and I raged with Zoe, cried and had a cup of tea with her - trying to pick up the pieces, all the time silently asking ourselves and each 0ther "what the HELL just happened there?!". Thankfully, Zoe managed to keep another visit which was scheduled the next day which Bonnie and I were able to accompany her to. Her children love her to bits - to see her tiny two-year old daughter come flying out to meet us, yelling "Mummy, MUMMY!", who wouldn't be a bit teary? Zoe stayed with us for another few days before landing a place in a rehab centre in another suburb. Happily, in that time she actually made a decision to follow Jesus - what a cause for celebration! If you are of the praying type, she desperately needs people who will come alongside her - a church community, or a neighbourhood group like ours to journey well with her both in rehab and when she comes out in a couple of months and begins the long, difficult quest of both reclaiming her children and re-learning how to parent them. She has a long way to go, but the horizon is clear and she is very motivated. Praise God.


SO - aside from that, I have been learning the rhythmns of the DTES more and more with each day. I have celebrated birthdays, go with neighbours to drop-ins, adult literacy and pottery classes, played hundreds of card games, celebrated new jobs, organised food pickups, watched Bollywood historical epics and reminisced about India, drunk litres of tea and coffee, cooked for an open dinner, joined in ukelele/guitar jams, farewelled a member of the team who is preparing to go to Sierra Leone with Word Made Flesh, been introduced to the new BBC series of Sherlock (brilliant), flown kites with kids, eaten a First Nation feast of moose, courtesy of our friend Jacquie; I have walked and walked the streets praying, spending time with God like I never have before. Yesterday I walked with some with some friends to Granville Island, which is a little peninsula full of wacky markets and shops (my mum would LOVE it). We stopped on the way to get poutine for lunch! That's another thing I can tick off my list! Despite the forty minute walk there and back, it was a STUNNING day and totally worth it. We could see Mount Baker in the distance, which is in Washington. It's my job next week to plan a trip to the still-snowy Mount Seymour, near North Vancouver. I'll keep you all posted!

Chris has just had a week in Mumbai with his Dad, who dropped in to visit him (cute). He has now successfully entered Oman - phew - he will now be travelling over land to get to Jerusalem in order to begin an internship with Christian Peacemaker Teams (
http://cpt.org/work) next week. Scary - but I'm so proud of him for doing it. Pray for his team's safety, but also that he will learn bucketloads about the suffering of the poor in the face of the war machine - something that we both make a lot of noise about back home. This experience will hopefully be a challenging and powerful chapter of Chris' relationship with the nonviolent Christ Jesus, who calls us to be with and for the downtrodden and to bring peace in the midst of violence.

Not long until I come home now eh? I really need a prayerful reentry to my beloved Aotearoa, to my Urban Vision community and my job. Please pray that I'll get enough time to prepare for this - it's just as important as preparing for the beginning of an internship.

My love to you all. I'll talk to you soon!

Me x

Some photos from India that I didn't want to put on Facebook

 Me in my Jetstar-orange sari! You can't really tell, but I'm sweating profusely under all the petticoats - sick.

 Chris and his new best mate, Rahul (whose middle name is Jishu - 'Jesus' - oddly enough). He gave Chris the cap he's wearing (don't know what his mum had to say about that...)



On the roof with some of our favourite and most common visitors, taken by Chumki-Masi (see below)

 My lovely, lovely host Aunty Chumki (in blue) being kissed by her niece, my hilarious friend Gita.

View from our host house rooftop, Bediapara, Kolkata. The house on the right with the yellow saris hanging up to dry have a pet pigeon that the youngest son likes to hang out with on their roof. Whenever he saw us looking over at him he'd make the pigeon do tricks for us... poor thing (!)

 Crazy/hilarious kitchen door in our mud-brick house (the room behind it is the siz of a cupboard...not sure why they're drawing so much attention to it)

At the Bridges' orphanage in Odisha (Orissa) with my 'photography school'. These girls had never used cameras before - we had a great time!

 

Us and the K-team youngies on the night I flew out! Kenny, Meghan, Chris, David and I

The post from last week that I would've put up but the internet crashed. AGAIN.

SO.

Here I am. In Canada.

It’s been far, far too long since my last update – I will try really hard not to let this one be too long to make up for it.

I landed in Vancouver, B.C on Wednesday nearly two weeks ago after a hectic last few days in India. For those who don’t know, I actually nearly missed my flight due to a mistake in the time – I thought that it was the midnight between Wednesday and Thursday, not Tuesday and Wednesday, and it took a trans-international, frantic phone call from my Mum to me while I was in Orissa to get me to realise that I’d got my lines very, very crossed. So we cut short our time with the Bridge family and their gorgeous orphanage haven in Jharsuguda, trained back to Kolkata lickety-split and spent my last evening in India with Kenny, Dave and Meghan from the Servants team. Then it was a teary, tired and wretched farewell with Chris at the airport, then several haphazard flights through China and the States which spanned 27ish hours (34 if you count waiting around in airports), and I arrived on the same day I’d left India – oh timezones, you are cruel and confusing masters. I was searched while trying to get through Canadian immigration because they were suspicious of the combination of my age, my dishevelled Indian clothing, and the fact that I didn’t have a work permit. Yeah, fair enough I guess!

I was greeted and loved from the start – the Servants community here are a lovely hotchpotch of about ten people who live in two houses which share one property on East Cordova street, which runs right through what is called the Downtown East Side (DTES). It is a sprawling, heavily populated suburb which is riddled with drug addiction and homelessness, which often operate in tandem. Drugs are cheap, nasty and very public here – down the road from our houses is ‘ground zero’, an intersection which is something like a market for substances, particularly cocaine (crack cocaine), crystal meth and the ubiquitous heroin. The deals, administration, and overdoses all happen in the public eye – something I as a Kiwi had to get used to fast. The team moved here six years ago in a bid to be a different approach for the inhabitants of the DTES – something that wasn’t a shelter or a soup kitchen (there are hundreds of those), or a clinic, or a drop-in. They wanted to be an open community who spend time with their neighbours, get to know them on an equal basis and practice hospitality that empowers people, rather than disenabling them, which can happen all too often in a neighbourhood where so many handouts are available. There are structures in place which give the team a body and life – Mondays are team days, where we eat and pray together, and the team sorts out admin and plans new projects or talks about ideas. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays end with an open dinner at six, which anyone can come to – often neighbours who team members are tracking with will come, as well as friends from across the city. Tuesday nights, after dinner is Creative World Justice – a bible study-cum-activism project that focuses on God’s love for those oppressed under unjust political structures, both locally and internationally – take a look at their little website which will give you a better idea of what meeting like this looks like. What I love is that a lot of neighbours seem to really get into this and will stick around to get involved in political bible studies or creative actions. Wednesdays, some of us ladies will go out around nineish in the evening and spend some time wandering and talking to women who are out working the corners of this neighbourhood. There are many of them, and it’s a cold, depressing and often brutal job, so we invite those who’re keen to come back to the Servants team centre on Hastings Street and have hot tea and cake with us. It’s called Night Vision and it’s a lot of fun. Every day begins with prayer at 9am at the Team Centre, and from here the day begins. I’ve been doing all sorts – hanging out at Womens’ Drop In Centres (the food is great), going to an open pottery workshop run by Grandview Calvary Baptist Church (if anyone here listens to Tom Wuest, I believe it’s his church), it’s called JustPotters – check ‘em out. I’ve also been walking the streets and learning how to talk to God about what I see, hanging out with kids, going to public forums on working with those who have mental health issues, going on food collection runs (a LOT of the food that the team gets is donated, which helps when we have to cook on large scales three or four times a week), hosting community dinners, and trying to soak up as much as I can. It has been full on, and I am tired and a wee bit run down – but I am loving every second of this grimy, scary neighbourhood, and so far it is loving me back.

I am struggling to marry my time in India with this crashing recourse through the troubles of Western neighbourhoods. The friendly poverty of my beloved homestay family and the team in Bediapara seems a long way away. I was re-reading my Servants intern journal the other day and read a small clipping that talked about the way that interns re-enter into their home cultures, and while Vancouver is DEFINITELY not my home culture, I can totally see how this all applies to me. There are several types of re-entry: Assimilators, Alienators and Integrators. Assimilators slide right back in like nothing happened – their experience gets lost in picking up the slack, in rediscovering the joys of soft beds and running hot water. The Alienators reject their home culture for a while, criticising and finding themselves angry at ever being a part of it. They succumb eventually, because they need a place to belong. Integrators expect dissonance upon their return, but are able to debrief it and identify the changes that have taken or are taking place within themselves upon ending an internship or homestay. They can make this experience count for the long-term, which is something I desperately want to do – but I feel more like an Assimilator. Things have moved really quickly, and every day I see opportunities to growthfully change slip through my fingers. Actually, maybe writing this is one step toward a more integrational approach… who knows.

To help stimulate more reflection on Kolkata, I will pop a couple of photos up at the bottom of this blog, but I’m all too conscious of the impact that photography has had on the privacy and lives of the poor, and I would be really stoked if no one reposted or reproduced these (or shows them to people who will). I’ll put photos of Canada on my facebook page, seeing as they are full of people who have facebook pages and don’t mind me pasting them all over the show.

I miss you all in Aotearoa – and Chris, of course, who’s still in India, hanging out with his long-lost whanau. Check out my facebook page if you haven’t already seen his lovely Taj Mahal umm… declaration!

Be well – I’ll try and be a bit more organised about this blogging thing.

Kia kaha.

 

 

Is it that time already?

In a week tomorrow, I will be flying out of Kolkata. Who would've thought?

A few things have happened in the last week - things have eased into something resembling a rhythm, which is going to make it harder to leave (I love domestic routine.... Secretly).

Before I left for India, I was set some challenges by the girls that I mentor back home in New Zealand. I unintentionally fulfilled one of those challenges, which was 'Go out dressed in a sari and with full makeup". On a whim, Gita decided that she was sick of the fact that I don't wear makeup ("Why you is this pale face?") and decided to paste me an inch thick like a Hindi soap star - complete with a bindi (called a thil - 'till' - in Bangla) and a dot of black eyeliner paint for a beauty spot. Completely inspired by this time, she dug out my new sari and ordered me into it, before parading me down the road to the bazar (market) with a couple of her friends. A 20 minute walk each way. In 35-degree heat and high, HIGH humidity. Despite the blatant stares and inappropriate comments. Oh well, at least I got the opportunity to wear the thing. Remind me not to get orange next time.

Chris and I also got the opportunity on Friday to go with Jane from the team here to another suburb called Girish Park, and visit her work Love Calcutta Arts, as well as the lovely and ubiquitously-popular Freeset, who make organic, fairtrade bags and t-shirts - and who run tours on Fridays. Freeset was our first stop - the day started with all the women gathering in the building's courtyard for singing and prayer before beginning work or counselling or training (all three are given by the trust to every worker) at ten. We were lead through the different rooms and up narrow sets of stairs to different rooms and introduced to some of the women and what they all do. It is a wonderful place and I thoroughly recommend including the tour to anyone travelling through Kolkata, although having been in a homestay and away from much Western contact for the previous few weeks, it felt weird to be so firmly 'othered' by being toured around with a bunch of other Pakehas in this gorgeous and tightly-knit community. Nevertheless, I was won and couldn't resist buying a tshirt before leaving. We also ran into an old friend from the New Zealand Baptist scene - Steve Pound, who coordinated my first short-term mission trip to Fiji five years ago! He and his family have been living in Kolkata for a couple of years now and working with Freeset. Accidental Aotearoa connections in India? Excellent.

The rest of the day was spent being shown around Love Calcutta Arts and the cool stuff they do. Think, one floor of guys designing and making portable, hand-operated water filters that can be used in a natural disaster (and even purify water from the Hooghly without any chemicals), and another floor of lovely ladies making bedspreads from recycled saris, stationery, beautiful cards and books, all eco-friendly and very, VERY easy on the eye. We got to spend a couple of hours working there too, folding paper to go into a new order of diaries. Please check out their website - unfortunately you can't order much stuff in small doses, but if you know a busines that needs things like journals for corporate packages or something similar, these guys would be excellent and very worthy.

There's also been a bit of puja (worship, festival) in our neighbourhood this week - from Saturday until today has been Shibtalapuja, which is a celebration honouring the goddess Shibtala. She brings health and wellbeing, and part of the festival also can involve atoning for sins (if you feel like you've been particularly bad). This involves putting on your best clothes and red paint on your face, making a number of processions as a group from the local temple to the closest pond or water source and splashing around a bit, then on the third trip to the pond completely dunking yourself in the pond, then moving back to the temple like this: take a couple of steps forward, then lie down face-first on the ground and draw a half-circle in front of yourself with a stone while other people sprinkle you with water. Repeat until you are back at the temple - however long that may take. After this, there are three days of celebration and general hullabaloo. Good fun, but often times like this are when family drama or fights happen, which, in high density housing, become everyone's business whether they like it or not.

Anyway, all in all a mildly busy, but satisfying week. Nearly all the kids who have befriended us have gone away to one of their family villages this week - they'll get back on Thursday though which will be nice. Secretly I'm a little bit happy for the increased peace and quiet.

We will leave our host family on Friday night, stay at the Team Centre, then on Saturday morning head out to Jharsuguda in Orissa (Odisha) to see some friends of Chris's family who run an orphanage there. Looking forward/mildly terrified of taking the train, although we've booked sleeper class tickets for the overnight journey back. We'll get back on Wednesday and I'll fly out that evening! How scary!

So, I guess I'm signing off for now. I'll try and post again before skipping the country!

Much love,

Me

Cal-cutting it

The last week has seen things bottom out a little bit. The other day I was walking down the street, sidestepped a taxi and suddenly remembered, "Oh, that's right - I'M IN INDIA!"

After recovering somewhat, I managed to get sick AGAIN - a matter of hours after updating this blog last Tuesday I managed to have a 'near miss' on the Metro train platform (no other information on the experience will be given, other than that it is colloquially known to rhyme with 'cart'), and things basically went downhill from there. I'm now on a course of antibiotics, and as of today I think things have come right for now. But it's been a frustrating course of events - I'm not used to being sick, and resent it even harder here for being one of the trademarks of a bideshi (foreigner). I haven't been as able to participate in communal activities, like meals, to the full level that I normally expect from myself. I have wondered if it's actually God trying to say something to me - the conversation would probably have gone like this:

Me: So, I'm sick... I'll have to sit around all day with my host family instead of, you know, REALLY getting into the slum experience... God, why can't you make me better so that I can be a bit more awesome? So that I can REALLY get out there and find out what it means to be disempowered and, you know, living in an Indian slum?

God: You're not already awesome?

Me: Well... No, the neighbourhood kids are beginning to think I'm boring because I can't run around much with them, I can't walk around visiting people, I can't do much at all except sit. Or sleep. I can't go anywhere!

God: Hmm. Doesn't that sound uncannily reminiscent of the concept 'disempowerment'?

Anyway, you get the picture.

Not much else to report this week - we went on a day-long silent retreat with the Servants team on Sunday at a Catholic school near the Team Centre on Dum Dum Road. It's the first time I've ever done one, and figured it would be a real challenge for such a stark, raving extrovert (haha). But it was actually wonderful and really restful. Meghan took me to Gorabazar to get some new clothes, as I was getting sick of washing and wearing the same two sets over and over again. I bought a beautiful, deep orange sari and took it home, full of hope that my host family would love it and think I was awesome and multicultural - after lots of emphatic gestures and broken Bangla conversation I discovered that they hated it! Wah-wah. But they then got out Chumki's best one and dressed me up in it (pity I didn't have the camera).

If you're in the praying way, Meghan from the Servants team here has been really sick on and off for a while now and it's really getting her down. The two guys, David and Kenny, have also been a bit shaky - health is really unpredictable here! The only ones who have stayed well are Steven and Jane, and their two wee kids who are five and three - maybe prayer that they stay in good health and good space would be a good call. Chris and I could also use some prayer as we continue to be in our communities, learn more Bangla and have more awkward cups of tea with lovely neighbours. It's all starting to feel a bit more homelike now, but we need all the God we can get :)

My love to you all, I hope y'all are thriving!

Chelsea x